I remember reading these columns with interest with every new issue of Proceedings that would appear on the periodical shelf in the NJROTC room of my High School. When I think back on it, I wonder how many of the contributors to this column were undiagnosed Aspies in uniform in the late 1980s. People who march to the beat of a different drummer, or had a different, or outsider's perspective on things that could point the way to a new and better way of handling things.
It's been I can't remember how long since I last looked at an issue of Proceedings, of course, and I've long since distanced myself personally from any involvement in military affairs apart from a lingering layman's interest from time to time. But it's funny the things you remember from a few years spent in High School NJROTC and a few semesters of college level NROTC.
All of this is a long-winded way of writing a blog post that is basically the Libraryland equivalent of "Nobody asked me, but..."
Word was passed down that from henceforth we would be re-labeling all of our YA books as MG books, which stands for "Middle Grades"; this was to be implemented system-wide. I thought it was a curiously labor-intensive long term project for such a seemingly cosmetic and superficial change. I'm not a Youth Services librarian, would not want to be one either (unless my outsized interest in manga and anime could be of use in such a context someday). Nor am I actively involved in Cataloging work either. I think RDA is madness and a step backwards or at least weirdly sideways from AACR2. But I've made peace with that philosophical objection and backed away from the active discussions of cataloging professionals. But I was curious about the rationale behind the change, and did some very cursory Googling to find out about why this change from YA to MG suddenly came about. Was it merely fickle fashion or was there a solid reason for it? I consulted YALSA and read a few professional articles to gain a deeper understanding of the debate.
And the debate, as I understand it now from that cursory review of the literature, is that some libraries are agitating for a more fine grained distinction between Young Adult (YA) literature aimed at more mature late teens (16 and up) and Juvenile (read: children's) literature. Literature in the more broad sense of "reading material" (Lektüre in German), beyond the narrow sense of Literary fiction (Literatur, in German). I know most professionals know that already, but it took a number of years for that distinction to become clear to ME, I'm embarrassed to admit. Middle Grades (MG) fiction, as I now understand it, has been proposed by YALSA members to fill the perceived gap, aimed at Tween and Young Teen readers who are beyond Juvenile reading material but for whom some of the material currently found in YA is a bit more mature, serious, emotionally challenging, etc, than this subset of young people. Delineated in this fashion, it makes perfect sense. You would have J, MG, & YA literature in your collective Youth Services collections, ideally speaking, and these readers would eventually age out and begin checking out the majority of their reading materials from the Adult Services main collection. One of the "shell-games" we play locally to head off censorship challenges before they occur is to selectively classify certain controversial topics as the next level of age classification than is standard practice in other, less conservative communities. We place in YA certain materials that other libraries would place in J, and place in the Adult Collection certain very mature YA works (usually those dealing with sexuality and social issues) that might otherwise be challenged by overly nosy & conservative parents. I think it's unfortunate we have to play this game with our public patrons, but I concede it's better than fending off constant challenges and raising public ire against the library, since we exist thanks to the local taxes paid by the general public, and if it maintains goodwill, the game is worth continuing, however much it may offend my inner sense of professionalism and cherished ideals about library ethics in the abstract. The net effect is fewer challenges, we still collect and retain the material, and those that truly need it can still obtain it without shame or judgement, and that is what we call a WIN at the end of the day.
But the fact that we play this delicate, quasi shell-game of classification as a normal part of doing business where we operate fills me with a sense of dread at our ham-fisted implementation of the Middle Grades (MG) classification schema as a complete replacement for YA. I'm beating my head against my desk in frustration at just how stupid our local decision is versus YALSA's original intent with creating MG in the first place. It completely misses the point of what YALSA was advocating; instead of a more fine-grained classification schema, our local decision essentially *collapses* the distinction between MG and YA. The net effect may well be that a lot more material in the upper end of YA maturity levels will get shunted over to compete for shelf space in the Adult Collection. YA will cease to be a meaningful designation in our system, and that's really unfortunate, since it's a perfectly good schema and I personally like a lot of the popular fiction that's written at this level of reader, and the spinoff media that comes from it (think Harry Potter or Percy Jackson).
To reiterate, I'm not a cataloger, I'm not a Youth Services librarian. It's none of my business and nobody asked me. I'm an obscure Interlibrary loan clerk and just content to keep doing my job. But as someone who once upon a time actually held a professional position as a librarian with an actual ALA-accredited MLS, this boneheaded local decision makes me want to scream on the inside. I don't raise a stink locally because it wouldn't do any good and would be plain disadvantageous for my long term career prospects. But I did feel the need to get this off my chest, since just yelling into my pillow at night wasn't quite enough.
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